News

The lead editorial in today's Globe & Mail (Free Our Wine, and the rest will follow) endorses the effort of Kelowna MP, Ron Cannan, to modernize Canada's archaic wine shipping laws. A post-prohibition era 1928 law currently makes it illegal for consumers to transport a single bottle of wine across a provincial border. The law also makes it illegal for BC wineries to ship to consumers in other parts of Canada. This law was originally designed to stop the inter-provincial traffic of liquor between provinces that had retained prohibition and those that had scrapped it in favour of government control. However, this purpose is long gone and the law is now used solely by monopoly provincial liquor boards to prevent competition by maintaining their absolute authority over prices and distribution. Theoretically, the law makes criminals out of tourists who take wine home with them from an Okanagan vacation. A proposed amendment would create a sensible "personal use" exemption so that Canadian wine lovers could legally move wine across provincial borders. This reform is long overdue. Please support it by visiting the campaign's website at FreeMyGrapes.ca, from where you can email your MP.